Re: [MacPerl] Formatted printing using 'rtf' file

[David Steffen <steffen@biomedcomp.com>]

There is a current thread on the main MacPerl list about using RTF 
from MacPerl, and I'm wondering if there is a Perl Monthly column 
here?

The thread is about creating an RTF template with Clarisworks and 
then changing its content with MacPerl.  I did a project (in MacPerl) 
where I needed to generate formatted output for a printer, and 
figured out how to generate RTF from scratch.  To be useful, the 
resulting document needs to be interpreted by a program which knows 
RTF, but there are a lot of those (Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, etc, 
etc: rtf IS an exchange format).  This is as much a feature as a bug; 
if your goal is to create some formatted text to insert into a larger 
word processor document (e.g. a grant proposal or patent 
application), rtf is a great way to go.

Similarly, generating Postscript de novo is not so hard, and in that 
case you can send output directly to a Postscript printer.  I have 
not done this from MacPerl, but I have written snippets of postscript 
in BBEdit and sent them to the printer.  If one of y'all has sent 
postscript to a printer from MacPerl and could point me to the 
correct FM and/or email me a code snippet, I probably could put 
together a tutorial on that.

The big insight to me is that although Postscript or RTF generated by 
a program like Microsoft Word is extremely complex and hard to 
understand, very simple RTF and Postscript works just fine and can 
easily be generated by MacPerl.

To put formatted text on the screen, of course, one can use the Mac 
Toolbox interface in MacPerl.  I've not done a lot of that, but 
probably could put something together*.

And finally, this may be obvious, but it is worth reminding folks 
that HTML can be used to created formatted text.  The resulting HTML, 
in addition from being published on the web, can be printed via any 
browser, and now can be imported by a number of applications (e.g. 
Microsoft Word).

-David-

* One of my dreams is to throw together a Simple Mac Interface module 
that would be a wrapper around the Mac toolbox calls that would 
supply extremely simple functions for writing text, drawing 
rectangles, etc, sort of like what was in the old Microsoft Basic 
package for the mac.
David Steffen, Ph.D.
President, Biomedical Computing, Inc. <http://www.biomedcomp.com/>
Phone: (713) 610-9770 FAX: (713) 610-9769 E-mail: steffen@biomedcomp.com

# ===== Want to unsubscribe from this list?
# ===== Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to macperl-request@macperl.org